LadyGang - Why Do I Love the Way That I Love: The 4 Attachment Styles Explained

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Keltie gets deep. Like heal-your-relationships-and-your-inner-child deep. She sits down with attachment theory expert Thais Gibson, founder of The Personal Development School, to break down how your subconscious mind has been quietly running the show in your relationships. They unpack how identify your attachment style and why the way you loved (or didn’t) as a kid still shows up in your relationships. Thais explains between core wounds vs core needs, the childhood patterns that turn us into people-pleasers, what secure love is actually supposed to feel like, how fear of abandonment sneaks into relationships, and the one question you should ask yourself before starting an argument with your partner. 💥💖For more info go to university.personaldevelopmentschool.com - Use code PDS2026 for 25% off your membership!Check out our other great sponsors!!Nutrafol: Got thinning hair? Get $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping at Nutrafol.com and use code LGPODMacys: Need Valentine's Gifts? Check out the Macy's Gift Guide! Shop at Macys.com or in store!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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A message from the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario. Mornings without coffee? Road trips without snacks? Movies without popcorn? Without our favorite foods, we'd miss out on all our favorite moments. Learn more at canadasfoodsystem.ca. It's time for a quickie. Podcast One presents The Lady Gang.

The Hollywood Girl Posse with Lady Gang Quickie. Here's Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek. Let's make this quick. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Lady Gang. Yeah, that's right, everyone. You're hearing Kelty Knight, not Becca Tobin, introducing this quickie episode. And that is because you told me very closely that in 2026, you wanted to be a better person. And we took that to heart. And we said, what do you want for 2026? And you said, we want more experts. Because when Lady gang brings in an expert, you change our lives. And so I got the opportunity to bring this woman

in and I wanted to sit down with her. So this is a special K-type, get your life better episode today. Joining us today is the founder of the Personal Development School, an online interactive platform with over 45 courses and programs designed to help people build emotional resilience, understand their attachment styles, we importante, create healthier, long-lasting relationships, not just with their lovers, but also with friends, family, work, and themselves. She is known for making complex psychological concepts like attachment theory, boundaries, nervous system regulation, actually make sense, and more importantly, usable in our real lives. Her work helps people finally stop repeating the same emotional patterns.

You know when you keep doing the same thing and you're like, why is nothing changing? She's here to help us heal our old wounds and finally feel safe being fully ourselves in relationships. Basically, if you have ever wondered, why do I keep doing the same thing, even though I know better, she has the answers and the tools to change it, and she's going to teach us everything she knows on this episode of Lady Gang. Please welcome the founder of the personal development school, Thais Gibson. Thank you so much for having me.

Excited to be here. I have listened to you on multiple other podcasts, and I was like, I need this woman. When you said neuroplasticity, my brain went, we need her on Lady Gang. We need the lessons of this. So first of all, I want to know how you got into this work and how you developed these courses. Let's talk about that first before we teach something. I mean, I could go into a very long story.

I'll try to keep it somewhat brief. But I went through a lot of childhood chaos growing up. And I think I always just was used to being in some sort of chaos. It was very comfortable for me. And it was what I knew. And I had one outlet. It was to play soccer. And I was like, I'm going to get a full ride soccer scholarship and get away from home.

when I was born and I was born and raised in Canada and I um wait where are you from Canada yeah oh I didn't know I'm from Edmonton oh no way I'm from Toronto just yes okay yeah so um so I was like I'm gonna get a soccer scholarship go to the U.S. and then um in my scouting year I had knee surgery went through this whole entire situation where took painkillers and just basically got addicted and it was this really crazy situation like I was addicted to to painkillers before I even like fully understood what addiction was. It was like, oh, this makes my life easier. I was like 15 years old and going through things and then kept trying to get more of them and then eventually found them. And it was a whole scenario. But I went through like pretty much daily use for

six and a bit years. And I was in a psychology class one day and I got a full ride soccer scholarship, but it was like to a smaller school. And it probably looked like my life was doing well on the outside and I was just like crumbling on the inside. It was kind of crazy. But I was thinking of literally leaving. Like I was thinking of just like leaving everything behind. I was like, I can't even do this. I would go to rehab in like the summer semesters in between school. Like I would try all these things. Anyways, nothing was really working. I was really struggling. And then somebody just magically said to me in a psychology class, it wasn't even the professor, oh, your conscious mind can't outwill your subconscious mind. And that was such an

earth shattering moment for me because it was like, oh, so when I keep telling myself I'm going to get clean. I'm going to get sober. I'm going to change my life. It's not that I'm like weak or incapable. It's actually that my conscious mind intends that and my subconscious is running the show. And I went on to learn that your subconscious is responsible for 95%. When I heard this, I was like, that's why I can't quit Diet Coke as I drink a Diet Coke. Exactly. But that is so crazy. Like, so the smart, the part of our brain that is saying, do this, do this every day. Don't pick this asshole. Be better at work. Eat the healthy

food, go to the gym, take care of yourself. Don't say mean things to yourself. That's such a small part of our brain. And the other part of our brain is like, you're an ugly asshole who's not worthy of love. Yeah. And it's not like coming at it from a painful place. It's not coming at it from this, like we're trying to berate ourselves. It's that we're trying to keep ourselves safe. So I always give people the analogy of like this bear in the woods. If you go into the woods and you see a bear and you run away and thank goodness you're safe, but you have to go into the woods again the next say, well, what does your mind do? It's stored the threat of the bear and it projects it onto everything. And so if the trees move in the distance and the wind, you're like, the bear's

coming and we're always bracing. So it's from a place of self-protection and self-preservation. But unfortunately, we end up just repeating those same patterns. And the craziest part of all of this is that when we're in this theme of self-preservation, it's one thing if you're being chased by a bear. It's another thing if you're in a situation where you grew up and you felt abandoned as a kid, or you grew up and you felt betrayed all the time, or you grew up and you felt like everybody was controlling you, then you're always projecting that onto people around you and your relationships. It's like everybody's personal version of the bear in the woods. And usually most people have a few of them if they came from an insecurely attached home.

But the other part of it is that, and this is where it's really wild, is that your subconscious equates familiarity to safety and thus survival. And your subconscious is survival wired. So what that means is that a lot of the time, even the things that are chaotic for us in our conscious, logical, analytical mind can look at things and say, this is not healthy. I want the emotionally available person. I want the healthy partner. I want X, Y, Z. I want to quit drinking Diet Coke. I want to quit eating chocolate, whatever it might be. We say that, but then our subconscious actually just ends up repeating those patterns because it says, well, we've been surviving this long. And so this is keeping us safe. And so let's keep going after the same thing. And that's

why we keep going through those same, you know, choosing the wrong person or the same types of turbulent relationships it's because it's our subconscious comfort zone this is so wild okay so you have this whole thing on your site about the attachment attachment styles styles yeah and people can go and take the court there's a quiz yes okay tell us about that okay so there's a really in-depth quiz and um there was an original body of work about attachment theory um by john bulby out of cambridge university and it was really great he talked there's four attachment styles. And basically every person has an attachment style and it dramatically impacts the way you connect and give and receive love and relationships. I always say to people,

it's a subconscious set of rules you've learned about love. But that body of work was a little bit incomplete because it's like, okay, here's your attachment style. Good luck. Yeah, exactly. You're like, oh, thanks. Like, great. I'm f***ed up. Awesome. We knew that. Like, this is not news. Exactly. So I, you know, because of myself, I came from this background of like, I got really originally into subconscious rewiring and understanding my subconscious and neuroplasticity and how to change patterns. And that was ultimately what was like so life-changing, got me sober, changed everything, made me feel peace for the first time as like a 22 year old

at the time, you know, everything really changed in my life dramatically. And, and so, you know, I was like, oh, well I've done that in all these areas. Why don't we just replicate that out for attachment patterns? And went on to do that. And really what I think is sort of like come full circle and complete that body of work was something called Gibson integrated attachment theory. So people can go into this, the school, they can take their quiz. They'll see, it's like an in-depth assessment. They'll see what their attachment style is. And then they'll actually see really in depth beyond just traditional attachment theory, what that associates in terms of their biggest wounds and fears in relationships, the things that will trigger them, what they need

to feel loved and connected, how to regulate their nervous system, and then how they'll generally operate from a place of how they set boundaries, how they communicate, because we develop these much more in-depth profiles. And then it gives you the actionable steps to start changing it and rewiring it. And people can get really dramatic results in as little as 90 days. We've had 60,000 people come through these programs and we get people who complete the program in full. Hey, give us a score, like a satisfaction score, an NPS score with your progress. And we literally, to date, are sitting at 99.7% for people who complete the program. Wait, what's the site?

At the Personal Development School. So personaldevelopmentschool.com. Okay. That's so easy to find. Okay. And so there's four attachment. Once you go on, you take the quiz, you're going to find out about your attachments. And they're four. And I've listened to you on so many things and I'm like trying to figure out what I am, but can you go through briefly, like what are the four attachment styles? And there's no wrong answer. There's like no bad versus good or I guess there is kind of like one you were well loved as a child and the rest you were f***ed up but you know so like basically if you're older than two or your kid is older than two it's already done there's nothing you do to change it so no no I'm like

no I hope you're like well other than the personal development school okay so so okay so you just said so many really interesting things at the same time so if so your attachment cell does develop between ages zero to two. And they were able to replicate this out with these old research studies. They could see and observe child's attachment patterns by putting them in a doctor's office waiting room,

have their parent leave and return and see how the child would respond to their parent. And anxious children would cling, avoidant children would look away and fearful avoidance would be really hypervigilant. Securely attached kids would be, you know, situated and normal.

And we'll talk about like exactly all those attachment cells in a second. But conditioning is happening all the time. It's why you hear like, oh, you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time around. We are always being conditioned by the people. anything that creates repetition and emotion fires and wires neural pathways in our brain

and so if we're exposed to a lot of healthy things repeatedly that creates new neural networks in a healthier more productive way if it's painful things consistently yeah so your attachment all develops between zero to two but our subconscious wants to keep recreating it so it's harder to change we're unlikely to however we we also see these sort of fluke situations where people get into a relatively secure relationship or they're with somebody healthy and then they start to become healthy over time or they do. That's me.

Yeah, okay. I had like a work thing where I was in a work situation where I was really hungry at my job. I was coming up in my career and I was, you know, abused, but like in the way, kind of like the morning show, TV show,

like it wasn't abuse outright where someone was like yelling at me, punching me. Like it was just sort of that fear, like that fear of like, if you don't do this, you will never get ahead or you'll never be anyone. So it was like just, and then also this fear of like, I think I was pitted against other people

very competitively in my job, like on purpose. So it was like, okay, well I'm going to take these five employees and I'm going to pit them against each other and see who rises to the top. And it was very apparent. And it was crazy because I left that job and I was heartbroken over it. And I was really sad at it. Like I went through grief, almost like it was like a relationship. And then I went to my next job doing the same sort of thing. And I had, this is so interesting you say this. I had, when I first started there, a couple things happened to me where I acted to these bosses in the fearful nature I had been trained to at my last job, even though these were completely new people. I was in a completely safe environment. They were obsessed with me. I wasn't in

competition with anyone, but I would go in the forest and I would see the bear without even there being a bear. And then it was crazy because they would be like, you're traumatized. You're traumatized. Like, we're here for you. We love you. We think you're great. And over time, I felt my confidence come back. I felt like I was kinder to myself. I felt safer in that environment. But so that's what you're talking about. 100%. That's a beautiful example. So interesting. Yeah. So if you surround yourself with those good relationships, you can rewire. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, the tricky part of it becomes, and I know we still have to go into the four attachments. I know I went circled away from your question but um but the tricky part is that a lot of times unfortunately

in our closest relationships what's most familiar to us is the way we treat ourselves and so we often pick like if we're somebody who's more anxious and we're people pleasing we you know when we're people pleasing we're avoiding ourselves we're dismissing ourselves so we often then pick the emotionally unavailable person yeah um whereas career it's a little different because you can get placed somewhere and it's not from this as intimate space so that was such a beautiful powerful example that just articulated it so well. But in relationships, sometimes you'll hear people be like, just date a secure person. And it's like, well, you know what? I used to be a fearful avoidant attachment style. And when I was fearful avoidant, I would date these secure men at the

time. I was young. And I would be like, God, they're so boring. Sure. Oh, my God. Why do they like me so much? Where's the interest, the exciting part? And it's like, so we often won't pick what's necessarily going to create that for ourselves. Oh my God. I feel exactly. Okay. So what are, I felt the same way when I picked my husband, we talk about this all the time on lady gang, each one of us, we dated mother and we were used to being abused and treated badly and the drama and the passion and the withholding and the push and the pull at all these things. And then when I met my husband, I was like, oh my God, you're nice. You have to train yourself to let this nice person who makes you feel safe, love you. And you got to learn to find the excitement

in that. And we see that all the time on our Lady Gang Facebook group. We're like, I've been married 10 years. I'm pretty bored. Like, cause it's so safe and it's so healthy. And you're like, but I just want you to like me up or break my heart for like a second so that I can like listen to an Adele song and cry in the car, you know, like it's so great. Okay. But going back to the four, tell us the four styles. Yes. Okay. So, and, and there's a way, by the way, that we can get into it a little bit that of how to undo that for ourselves, if that's a theme, cause it actually tells us something really meaningful about ourselves. We're still carrying a little bit of it so it's good to know okay so for style so um first style research shows it makes up about 50

percent of the population looks like it's on the decline um securely attached it's on the decline guys you're screwed okay no because some people hear this and they're like 50 percent like there's no way 50 people are secure but usually secure people pair up with each other and get married and stay in long-term relationships and make more securities yeah exactly so so securely attached people make up roughly 50 percent of the population um it moves locks up with the divorce rate so i find it to be super interesting as the um the secure attachment rate declines the divorce rate increases so they move like united with one another um securely attached people report being the happiest in relationships and having the longest lasting relationships and both matter

because you can have a lot of people i've worked with a lot of couples over the past 14 years like you can have a lot of people who are like i'm still married it's been 20 years but they're miserable. Like that's not necessarily success. Right. They like literally can't stand each other. Exactly. So that is our securely attached group. They're generally formed in childhood. But like we said, like it can change over time. In childhood by individuals, by parents who have a lot of approach-oriented behaviors. And what that means is that they're attuned to their kids. They're present. If their children are crying or fussing, they notice, they come towards the child, they try to soothe the child. It sounds like a small thing, but it has a heavy impact

because it says it's a messaging you give to the child subconsciously through that repetition over time that says, if you need me, I'm here. I care enough to like attune to what you're feeling. You can express openly with me and I'm a safe place to do that. And I'm going to be here and meet your needs. And so you can trust me. You can rely on me. And like a lot of kids don't grow up with that. And so that creates this modeling. And as they grow older, they get healthy communication and there's transparency and there's a lot of trust. So they bring that into their future relationship. Interesting. Okay. The other three are insecurely attached. They make up the other roughly 50% of the population. It's more spread between dismissive, avoidant, and anxious. But

if you imagine, it's sort of along a continuum. So on one end, we have the anxious attachment style. Anxious kids grow up usually with very loving parents, but they're inconsistent. So they go through either real, which can be more extreme, or perceived abandonment. Real abandonment is the obvious. It's things like a parent leaves the home, never comes back. Somebody has a parent pass away when they're six years old. These types of things will imprint this individual to be like, oh my gosh, I'm bracing for my bear in the woods, abandonment. Yep. A lot of children though, and what's really interesting about neuroplasticity is when we

experience a lot of repetition of small T trauma, it ends up over time having a very similar impact on the brain as big T trauma. So like if you worked a lot? Exactly. So in this case, we might see things like you have two very loving parents, but they're always working and you're always kind of left with the grandparents and the kids are like, where are my parents? Why am I not with them? Why am I not seeing them? It can also be things where there's a very loving parent and then a very cold parent. And that juxtaposition feels like this sort of abandonment between the two. So those types of situations can register as like, oh my gosh, I have this abandonment wound. And the big triggers they develop, because a lot of

those types of conditioned patterns are the fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, unloved, not good enough, unsafe. Those are like, they're big things. And when they feel these triggers, they often act a little bit childlike. And I don't say that in any sort of derogatory way, but they report – anxiously attached individuals report feeling like a little kid. Like give me a real-world example. Like who is this bitch and how do we know her in our lives? So let's say it's your friend and let's say she's dating somebody and that person hasn't really texted her back in a few hours and she hasn't heard from them or they're not asking her on another date. She might cry.

She might get really needy, really clingy, really like text a lot, call a lot. panic spiraling and she's yeah and she's feeling like she needs like a parent to come soothe her and he's literally at the gym yeah and he's or he like is working late and he's got a busy job and he's you know and so they a lot of anxious attachment styles they jump to conclusions they panic okay it's not their fault right because it's like this they're wiring of their subconscious mind but they end up in situations where they're very needy clingy um stressed they're the types that in a conflict they're the ones and it's so sweet and endearing honestly i used to see couples they've come in there'd be like a dismissive and an anxious and the dismissive can't and we'll get

into dismissive but they can't process conflict very well on the spot so they're like going in the other room and shutting the door and saying they need space and the anxious attachment cells following them around the house they're like they're literally like let's fix it right now I want to fix it right now I have a feeling I have a big feeling I want to talk it out I want to talk it out and they're like I can't do this right now oh my god exactly and they really struggle to self-soothe so they pretty much exclusively soothe through other people and so that's where they are doing that. And they, they don't mean to like accidentally step on people's boundaries, but they sometimes do that. And it's coming from this place of like, but let's make it

better. And it's well-intentioned. And, you know, to, to this point, anxious attachment cells are very like charismatic and charming and lovely and friendly. Like they've really developed a lot of their people skills because that's how they, they've learned to attach. Exactly. So, so they have these superpowers too, but that's the part that makes it challenging. And then unfortunately they often pick the wrong people. They pick the emotionally unavailable people because they're subconscious comfort zone, how they treat themselves as they put themselves last. They people please. They put themselves on the back burner. And so what's familiar, their conscious mind says, oh, let's pick the healthy person, the available person. And the subconscious says,

gosh, this unavailable person. You should pick someone just like dad who's not really there and doesn't want to talk about it. Exactly. Because that's what you grow. Oh, God, it makes so much sense. Okay. What are the other two? So other end of the continuum is the dismissive avoidant. Dismissive avoidants have a very starkly different childhood. And a lot of their messaging that they receive is that there's not really room for their emotions. There's not really time for them. So they go through childhood emotional neglect. Now, children are wired to need attunement and they need to feel safe. They need to feel seen and they need to feel special. And if a child doesn't get that, it's going to affect them. And so children who grew up in an environment where

they're being told, oh, don't, you know, children should be seen and not heard. Don't be a crybaby. get out of here or like stop crying. And even parents sometimes expressing like, you know, disgust or, you know, deflecting or shaming the child's emotions, even just in small doses repeatedly over time, that type of messaging causes a child to go, okay, this part of me is wrong. It's defective. This emotional part of me, this vulnerable part of me is shameful. And so what they do is their attachment strategy is they minimize their needs. They're like, if I just don't take up too much space and I'm not annoying and I'm not a burden to anybody and I'm hyper independent, then not only do I feel relief by not constantly feeling rejected when

I just choose not to need anybody, but on top of that, it actually gets me closer to being able to attach. Like I'm going to be accepted and wanted around if I'm just really independent and I don't bother anybody. And so this individual really represses their emotions deeply, usually at a very early age. And as an adult, because they tend to associate a lot of their conditioning says closeness has been painful, closeness really gets you basically feel trapped in a situation where your needs aren't met. Then as an adult, they're individuals who they're a little slower to warm up. They're a little more private. They're a little more standoffish. But as you really get close to them, a lot of times dismissive avoidance cut and run. They're like,

oh, things are real. I feel emotion. I'm not supposed to feel emotion. I should get out of here. And they tend to often sabotage closeness in relationships over and over again. They may struggle to really make long-term commitments or settle down. If they do settle down in a commitment, they usually sort of have these two pull away periods, like first four to six months that you're dating them, they pull back. A big pull. Yeah. Before a commitment into the honeymoon stage. But then when you want to get engaged, they're like, absolutely not. Yeah. And that's the second big one. And can you get through that? Like, can you change someone's mind? So people can choose to do the work and show up. Yeah. Yeah. So can you change somebody else's

mind? They have to be willing to do the work with you. You know, a lot of people we can, yes, like pressure people into doing things, but then it doesn't like solve the root of the problem. Usually in people who kind of said, no, but we're going to, we're going to, and they pushed, usually it just ends up that that person's still avoidant in the marriage, right? So then they have a partner and then they report being like lonely in the marriage. So to me, the number one most important thing is like, are you doing the work? Like, are you doing some kind of work on yourself? When I met my husband, he was dismissive avoidant. I was a little bit fearful avoidance still for sure. He had done a little bit of work too. And like, we both really showed up and like did the

work and like thrived. But for a lot of people, if one person's not doing the work, I'm like, don't, don't commit and don't push for something. If you don't see that you're actually fulfilled now, because if you're not fulfilled now, what you see is what you're going to get. And so you need to at least see behaviors that indicate that that person's doing something to shift their patterns. So if someone came back into your life years later and was like, I've done some work, I've changed. And you're like, you know, maybe there's a possibility, but it's sort of like people what you're saying is like people are who they are they're like kind of wired this way unless they want to do the work on themselves to be sort of the better version of avoidant the

better version of cleaning yeah you become secure you heal and become secure and like you become secure in the fact that like you'll learn to be vulnerable you'll learn to feel comfortable i i still know i have to do the fourth but it's such a great question like you you'll see people truly like just you know i've worked with like thousands and thousands of people but even just to speak from personal experience like with my husband like he's so vulnerable like just so like open and shares and like you know I told you right before we started and not to go too far down the rabbit hole but we are we lost our dog and and thank you and and um it was after like you know a long time and like we like you know looked at videos together and cried like you know he's so

yeah he balls yeah so like there you'll see like people deeply deeply change but they have to learn through through patterning that it's safe to like it's it's exposure work it's like being vulnerable over time and and um you know and what i actually think is so beautiful honestly about relationships when you see two different attachment styles is that exactly what each person needs to do to make the relationship work also just so happens to be what they need to do for their own healing so if you take like a very traditional anxious avoidant relationship somebody anxious somebody avoidant yep we still have the fourth attachment cell but yeah um the anxious person like a big part of what they need to do to make the relationship work is learn to give their partner

their breathing room, learn to respect their independence, learn to self-soothe so that that can happen. And self-soothing is wildly important for them. They develop a sense of self and their boundaries and learn to regulate their nervous system. So there's all these beautiful things. And dismissive avoidance for their relationships, they need to learn to make compromises and open up and be vulnerable and share. And so that's actually healthy for the relationship, but that ultimately is so healing for them. So it's really beautiful. There's a beautiful opportunity, but you need to see like hey somebody's actively doing something to move towards it it doesn't have to be therapy courses counseling it doesn't have to be that yeah it has to be that they're

clearly being more vulnerable clearly trying to communicate differently clearly trying to break and change their pattern okay what's three tell us about this bitch yeah so fourth attachment so last attachment cell is the fearful avoidant so the fearful avoidant is their overarching theme in childhood is chaos so more like big t trauma and sort of a typical sense that you'd see things like having a parent who's an active addiction or a parent who's an alcoholic, maybe a parent with narcissistic personality disorder where you get like the love bombing one day and then the guilt tripping and manipulation and kind of cruelty another day. And the overarching theme, it doesn't have to just be those circumstances. The overarching

theme is like chaos. And most importantly, you never know what you're going to get. So children who grow up in this type of environment, their attachment strategy, just like the anxious is to stay close and the dismissive is to create distance, The fearful avoidant attachment strategy is like, I'm going to be hypervigilant. I'm going to notice every little micro-expression, body language, tone of voice. This makes so much sense. If you watch the Railhouse Wives of Salt Lake City, Whitney Rose is this. Her dad, she's opened up about it.

Her dad was an alcoholic, and he was in and out of her lives. And she's the one that sits at the table and should be like, well, Lisa, why'd you look like that? Or like, why'd you say that? And be like, no, Lisa, you on January 37th on 2016, you said that like she remembers everything categorically. She's like hyper vigilantly tracking everything. The tracker. Yeah.

And you don't mean to. Right. It's not even conscious. You had to. One of the best examples I heard over the years is somebody said, I could tell by the way she said she'd be upstairs in her room. And she could tell by the when her mother got home, the way she closed the door. She knew. She's like, oh, I should close my door and I should stay away.

Or, oh, I can leave my door open and say hi to mom. It's like you notice all these little tiny things. Sure, sure. And that's how you survive, right? Exactly. And so what's really interesting is that if you look at an environment like that, so let's say that Whitney, who you mentioned, her dad was an alcoholic, you said. So she would have grown up and like let's say one day dad's coming home and he's drinking

and he's in a good mood though. And he's like nice and loving and hugging. And then he comes and then he's sober. Yeah. Exactly. another day he's like drinking and he's scary mean cruel whatever it might be and it's like you get wired to go oh bears are nice in the woods and bears are terrifying it's like you get wired to essentially go okay love is a good thing sometimes and love is a terrifying thing sometimes

and what that causes is the person to be very push-pull very hot and cold very back and forth and they often become the roller coaster relationship um because they're jumping to conclusions a lot and they're thinking the worst um they're very deep people they're not very good operating at a surface level. They often get into like deep research or spirituality or things that are like about the deeper parts of life. Oh my God. She had like everyone come and have to like blow out their like emotion. Okay. This all makes sense. Sorry. Everything comes back to housewives here on Lady Gang, but okay. Yes. Okay. We got it. And so, and so yeah, that's what you'll see. And so they grow up and they're often hot and cold push and pull in relationships. I was a

fearful avoidant. I, you know, you give a lot of mixed messages. People kind of like chase after you thinking like, but what is it? And it's a lot of intermittent reinforcement, unfortunately for, the other person. But it's because internally you're like, I really want closeness. And then you have closeness and you're like, oh my gosh, you could really hurt me. And now I need to push you away. And now, and so there's a lot of hot and cold and push pull, but ultimately it's one of the most important things that you can ever heal because you're not at peace internally until you really do that work. All right. When we come back, I want to talk about the brain plasticity or whatever that is.

We'll be right back. The Lady Gang. Okay, you talked about in the brain how you can train. Can you talk about, like, why our brains, they go to something that's easy and they don't want to do the work. Like, can you just discuss why we're set in these patterns, essentially? Yeah, we're set in these patterns because it's sort of what we mentioned earlier. It's like once you're in it, it feels like, well, you've been surviving,

so this is obviously working, and your subconscious is a very survival wire. it. So you end up going, well, this is working. Let's keep playing it out. Let's keep repeating it because your conscious mind is the more analytical, logical one who can evaluate things and say, oh, this isn't very healthy or like, hey, this is actually hurting us. But your subconscious is like, no, we've been surviving and so it's good. And so oftentimes we'll go back through and choose the same types of themes and patterns because it's what's safe. And that's just our brain because our brain has to process so many things a day. It doesn't have time to be analytical on everything? So your conscious mind takes in about 40 to 60 bits per

second of information, of data. Your subconscious and unconscious collectively takes up to a billion bits per second of data. So we end up in situations where, you know, sometimes you'll meet somebody and people will say, but how could I have known that on the first date that this person was going to be this way? Well, when you first meet somebody, micro expressions, body language, tone of voice, Like we take up so much information and we're clocking all of that and not all of it's making it up to our conscious mind. Just a very, very teeny tiny bit of it is. And that's why oftentimes people will say, oh, but I got butterflies.

It felt like the soulmate connection was so strong. And then it turns out that like two months later, the person's discarding you and they were a narcissist because a lot of times that's actually what's happening. And whatever is that familiarity zone for us, we equate to safety even when they're not necessarily an actually safe person. Okay. I wrote this question. I had a very interesting thought when I was looking at your work, which is like, why?

So on Lady Gang, we look around at our community. We look around at ourselves when Jack was dating, when we first made the podcast 10 years ago, and we would be like, why are my friends that are so beautiful, so smart, so high achieving, why do they so often allow themselves and attract these emotionally unavailable partners. And like, you know, when you're like, God, she's such a smart girl and she makes such dumb ass decisions for her life. Like, what is that and why? Is that attachment stuff? Yeah, that's such a great question. A hundred percent of the two that are most likely to do that are the anxious and the fearful avoidant. And what's so interesting is the

exact archetype of person you're talking about is like the emotional over-functioner. They're like, let me be so perfect up to everybody's standards. Let me never make, you know, any mistakes in relationships let me put all of this pressure on myself let me make sure everybody's needs around me are taken care of let me make sure that everybody is seen and heard and there's all of this external focus and it comes at the expense of yourself right like securely attached people learn to consider themselves while considering others because they had a childhood where that was safe to do but for other attachments i was especially anxious and fearful avoidance they had to be focused on like people pleasing or winning people over trying to stay safe in their

environment. So they hyper fixate on others. And if you look at like the person who's always emotionally over-functioning, all the pressure on themselves, all the expectations on themselves, all of that, like push, push, push, go, go, go. Well, who, like what's the sacrifice? What's the trade-off? It's you. It's like your time to say, hey, these are my needs. This is where I need to take up space. This is, these are my feelings. I have them too. Like that's the archetype of person where there's just not room made for that. And so what's their subconscious just comfort zone. It's, oh, let me also pick people who are going to treat me the same way I treat myself. They're going to put me last. They're not really going to be there. They're

not going to really notice that I have needs. And they're going to be usually takers more than givers in a relationship. Oh, it's me to a T, but we're working on it. No, I think it's so interesting. And I like that you're giving us just a thought instead of sometimes when you make these poor decisions for yourself in relationships, at work, or whatever it is, you're just like, oh, I'm just dumb. Like, I just should be better. And I think what I like about this work and what you do at the personal development school and these courses is you give us permission to be gentle on ourselves. And, you know, and again, like, I don't think you're necessarily saying, hey, it's your parents' fault. Like, obviously, if your parent was an addict, that was unfortunate.

it. And like, maybe it is your parents' fault, but like, I'm someone who I have two loving parents who I grew up in the eighties, child of the nineties. Like it was a different time in parenting. Like I was a latchkey kid. My parents were both working full time. They were trying to provide for us. They were trying to live this like Canadian dream of like, get the mortgage, get the house, get the cars. And like, you know, I was left to my own devices a lot, you know? And so because of that, I think I never, I'm like that person who's like, let me show up perfectly for everyone so that I'm not a problem here. You know, I don't want to add another, I have like a brother who's a little bit, a little

bit, my brother's mentally ill. And so it was like, I'm just not going to be a problem for anyone. I'm going to show up perfectly in everything I do at my own expense. Right. But like, when you go into this work, then like, if my mom's listening to this podcast, she's like, well, I tried the best I could, you know what I mean? And like, I just, I want to like take the pressure off everything you're doing for your kids is them up in some way. Like, you know what I mean? Like there is no perfect parent. Like all of our

lady gang moms are listening right there. Like, oh my God, my kid cried and I didn't go to them and have a conversation about it. Are they going to be avoidant and never find happiness? Like, can you just, yeah. Like, do you know what I mean? Can we, can you take the pressure off us? Because it feels like, I don't want my mom to feel bad. She did the best she could. a 100 so there's two themes here theme number one is that if you're the adult who's going through this it's not your fault so you can be gentle to yourself but it is your responsibility because only you can fix it it's your wiring now it's your conditioning you're living with as an adult and it's not hard to change these patterns it just requires like a little bit of commitment

across a short period of time the flip side of it is it's one of the most common questions i get it's like like i my best friend she'll call me sometimes you know once a week and be like i just said this, she's like the best mom. She's incredible. And she'll call me once a week and say, I said this and it came out wrong and did it. Oh my gosh, are my kids going to be affected? They're ruined. I'm like, no. What it is, is it's essentially kind of a numbers game. Like it's a ratio thing. So if you're a parent and 80, 85% of the time you're showing up and you're solid, you're consistent, you're doing your best, you're pretty present in your time with your kids, then you're going to

end up having a really secure kid. If you get that number down to 50% and it's 50-50, yeah, you're going to have a kid who's more likely to have an insecure attachment self. It's 40% of the time you're present, 60% of the time you're distracted or you're on your phone or you're doing these things. Yes, that will affect your children, but conditioning is repetition plus emotion over time. So whatever experiences we have, if you are an amazing mother and then one day you're going through a hard time and you lose it and you yell at your kid who's crying in the back seat and then you're like, oh my gosh, it doesn't help you to guilt yourself. It doesn't help you to beat yourself up. It helps you to be like, I'm a human. I have my own stuff. It helps

you to also acknowledge it to your kids. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm imperfect. I'm a person. I lose my temper too sometimes to be able to say something. But there's no point in beating yourself up. It's about if you're showing up that way all the time, it's definitely time to take some accountability and do the work. But if you're a human being and you make mistakes, that's perfectly fine. It's not going to dramatically change your children's life. Okay. And the last thing I wanted to ask you about was how long this real change takes. If someone's listening to this episode and they're like, wow, this is really speaking to me. And I see these patterns in myself. You know, we're big proponents of therapy. We're big proponents of self-work. Like we love that shit here at Lady

Gang. And if someone's like, wow, I really do feel like, oh, maybe I see myself in this and I'd like to do the work. Like what does a course look like? What is, how long does it take to start rewiring the brain. Yeah. So we go for 90 days. So 90 days, we go through major things. We start with your core wounds or triggers. So that fear of abandonment or being alone or that fear. Is it like worksheets or is it videos or like how does it? Yeah. I'll give you a quick example. So one of the first things we do with triggers is we help you understand that your conscious mind speaks language and your subconscious speaks in emotions and images. So I'm not a big believer in affirmations. I think they're kind of a waste of time. Because you're like, if I say whatever you do, do not

think of a blue balloon, you think of a blue balloon, your conscious mind heard the language of do not, but too late, your subconscious already flashed this image. So we actually have to speak in images and emotions to our subconscious mind. So one very starter exercise we get people to do is find the opposite of their wound. If it's, I'm not good enough, I am good enough. And then we come up with memories of times we actually felt good enough because every memory is a container of emotions and images. Oh my God, I could start to cry. This is, I obviously need this. Okay. Yeah. And so if you think of like a memory of a time where you felt good enough, you actually will see the images of it in your mind's eye and you'll feel the emotions.

And so what we do is we come up with 10 memories for repetition. And they have to be things where we actually felt good enough. They don't have to be huge. They can just be like human moments. I was a good friend two weeks ago. I showed up this way. I had that hard conversation. And we record them down. And then we actually record ourselves like saying them out loud. And we listen to it for 21 days because it takes 21 days to really build strong neural networks. And we ideally listen to it the first hour that we wake up or the last hour that we go to sleep because our brain's producing more alpha brainwaves, which actually means that our subconscious mind is more suggestible. So we take in information, we sponge it up better then. And so it's like a

two to three minute a day exercise across 21 days, and you can start to really tackle wounds. And I'm telling you, as somebody who's seen this firsthand and as somebody who's done this, it's frigging life-changing. It really changes anything that you're carrying that way. And some people are like, oh my gosh, what if I don't, if I don't feel not good enough while I still try so hard? Yeah. You'll, you'll have all of your superpowers you've developed thus far to, to cope in the world, but you won't tear yourself down or beat yourself up. It's a thing. I was like, I can't, I don't even sometimes want to do the self-work because I don't want to lose my edge because I'm such a psychopath that I'm like, that makes me powerful because I'm so vengeful and I'm supposed

so spiteful and I'm so unhinged and I have so much to prove and I'm so wildly, deeply unhappy that like, oh my God, what if I got, if I got all a Zen and like all of a sudden I'm a monk, like the Lady Gang podcast is not going to get made every week. Okay. Like, let's be honest, Beck and Jack are not putting together the spreadsheet. Okay. They're too healed to do the Excel spreadsheet. So I love what you're saying is like, you can still be yourself, but like maybe a little. A hundred percent. You'll still have your superpowers. You really won't lose them. And you'll, you'll be less distracted from the things you want to go out do. Because it brings you back. Sometimes when you say, okay, I push myself so hard, but then

maybe sometimes you burn out or maybe you feel really emotional or exhausted or those things. And it's like, no, no, you'll know how to better balance so that you can sustain your edge, so that you can sustain it. It'll really help in terms of those types of things. Okay. So if people are interested in this work, I mean, we could talk for nine hours, but if people are interested in your work, where can they find you and where can they sign up for the classes and the course? Yeah. So I'm at personaldevelopmentschool.com, www.personaldevelopmentschool.com. You can go on the website. You can take a full in-depth attachment quiz. It's really like an assessment. It will spit out what your attachment style is.

It will help you learn how to heal your core wounds, learn what your needs are because it's the biggest way we give and receive love and relationships, strategies to regulate your nervous system. It really goes through boundaries, communication, those five major pillars. And there's little daily exercises for everything. I'm in there. I go through things with the students three times a week. They come in if they have questions. So yeah. And we've got an amazing support work, a network of colleagues who are therapists, counselors, everything. And they're in there every day of the week. We have like two live events a day if you have questions or need support. Oh, I love this. Yeah. And then I'm also on YouTube. I put daily content out. It's

personaldevelopmentschool-chaisegibson and then at the personaldevelopmentschool on Instagram. This is amazing. And Lady Gang, we will put this in our, we just moved our newsletter over from Flowdesk to Substack. And so now we moved our community over. So we'll put this in the Substack as well so it's easy for you guys to find and we can um link that there and put all her links so that you can easily find and sign up and i'm very interested um in the comments we'll we'll do a prompt but i'm interested to know what attachment styles we are like i'm gonna make becca jacka i call them um becca and jack both take the quiz and so we can find out our attachment styles and we will report back i love your work thank you so much for your time this was very helpful to me i

I can't wait to do the work and not lose my edge. Lady Gang, let us know what you thought. How else can we fix your life for 2026? And we will, we weren't here for a long time. We're here for a good time. That's Steve. Lady Gang is hosted and produced by Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek with social media support from Kali Carrera, audio and video editing from Jared Monaco, and additional

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